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Taking long walks down Prague's cobbled streets, Barnes first assembled the entire record in his head, beginning with a Transylvanian folk melody, warped and reconstructed around improvised trumpet, and ending with a cover of "Portlandtown," an American anti-war folk song often played by Woody Guthrie. In between, Barnes touches on Romany gypsy traditions, klezmer, mariachi, early American folk, modern composition, as well as experiences with his previous bands.

Starting in Leicester then returning to the States, Barnes constructed a band that includes trumpeter Dan Clucas (who played with Henry Grimes and Arthur Lee and Love), tuba player Mark Weaver (who has done time with Anthony Braxton), and Heather Trost, who sings, plays violin and piano. He also got his mother to play harp, but he kind of already knew her. Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel traveled to New Mexico to contribute as well.

Darkness At Noon unrolls the curtain to a circus of musical curiosities, and Barnes presides over it all with the zeal of a grand conductor. Pick apart the influences if you like, but better to let it fall over you as one unified whole. Touring the world has never been so easy.

• AHAAH is former Neutral Milk Hotel member Jeremy Barnes
  
• Previous collaborations with Bablicon, Bright Eyes, Broadcast, and others
  
• Touring extensively in 2005 including an appearance at SxSW

  30-second MP3 excerpts:

  Laughter In The Dark
  The Moon Under Water
  The Water Under The Moon
  A Black And White Rainbow
  For Slavoj
  Europa
  Pastelka On The Train
  Goodbye Great Britain
  Our Lady Of The Vlatva
  Wicky Pocky
  Portlandtown

Recorded in Budapest during mid-2008 around the core of the Hun Hangar Ensemble (a group of extraordinarily talented Hungarian folk musicians), Delivrance proves that months of submersion in the local culture and making music the focus of daily life has seeped right through Barnes and Trost's songwriting and playing. This is by far their most vivid, intense, and confident work to date.

A mix of traditional songs and original compositions appear on the album. Opener "Foni Tu Argile" is from Greece, traditionally played on bouzouki with vocals. Collaborator Chris Hladowski (Scatter, Nalle) helps transform into a righteous instrumental stomp with an incredibly seductive, heavily percussive melody that is rich with color and almost seems laden with spice and incense. "Kertesz" sets off a frenzied accordion, racing against the flashing bow of the violin and distinctive sound of the cimbalom, a dulcimer-like instrument played with sticks.

"Raggle Taggle" touches on a plangent note of sorrow before the violins caper off into a heady dance-- an example of typical Hungarian style, but with new melodies. "Turkiye" urges another breathless dancing spree; this time the trumpet blares atop a swath of melodies from Turkey, Serbia, and Bosnia alongside some brand new ones. The evocatively titled "Vasalisa Carries a Flaming Skull Through the Forest" has the aspect of a funereal march, with the clarinet in the spotlight.

Barnes and Trost's new band began touring in mid-March '09, kicking things off with a SXSW appearance, followed by North American shows with Andrew Bird and Wilco. Their European tour began in Leeds on May 2 as part of Fuseleeds09. There will be plenty more festival appearances in Summer '09.

30-second MP3 excerpts:

Foni Tu Argile
Kertesz
The Man Who Sold His Beard
Hummingbirds
Raggle Taggle
I Am Not A Gambling Man
Turkiye
Zibiciu
Vasilis Carries A Flaming Skull Through The Forest
Lassu

Recalling Kurt Weill's orchestrations, Carl Stalling's visionary cartoon soundtracks and Tom Waits' more whimsical works, Barnes creates a playfully gothic atmosphere with his multi-layered, frantic compositions. Mixing field recordings with accordion, piano and bursts of drunken choruses, he generates a singular and unnerving orchestral whole. A song's direction can hinge on a dog's bark or a phone ringing, while cacophony and sweet, hymn-like harmonies cohabit in entertainingly unexpected passages. Influenced by everything from Eastern European folk music to Pierre Schaeffer to Spike Jones & His City Slickers, there's a healthy disregard for boundaries at play. A Hawk And A Hacksaw is a soundtrack for PT Barnum deceits and backwoods carnivals, top hats and curly moustaches, but maybe gone a little more screwy. What's more, everything is live-to-tape.

• Playful, cartoon-y dementia from composer and one-man orchestra Jeremy Barnes of Neutral Milk Hotel and Bablicon
  
• Limited vinyl edition still available!

  30-second MP3 excerpts:

  Maremaillette
  A Hack and a Handsaw
  Romceasca
  A Hard Row to Hoe
  All Along the Tide
  Black Firs
  Cotton Woods
  At Dusk
  Quand Le Son Devient Aigu, Jeter La Girafe la Mer
  To Pine in Time
  A Kernel
  A Hawk and a Hacksaw
  With Our Thoughts We Make the World

A Hawk And A Hacksaw recently supported Electrelane in the UK, and Broadcast and Manitoba in the US (a full European tour for autumn '04 is currently being organized). Last autumn, he opened shows across North America for the Warp artists with his idiosyncratic one-man show.

Barnes is currently recording the follow-up, due for release in early 2005. This debut album was originally released by Cloud Recordings in North America, the label run by members of Olivia Tremor Control.

• Playful, cartoon-y gothica by Jeremy Barnes of Bablicon and Neutral Milk Hotel
  
• Limited edition

At eighteen Barnes departed his hometown of Albuquerque, New Mexico, in hot pursuit of music and adventure. He travelled the U.S. and Europe, playing with cult faves Neutral Milk Hotel, Bablicon and Broadcast before releasing AHAAH's self-titled debut in 2002 (a whimsical mix of Kurt Weill, Tom Waits and PT Barnum, full of accordion, piano and drunken choruses).

After a stint in Prague, where the celebrated follow-up Darkness at Noon was written, Barnes returned to New Mexico and met violinist Heather Trost who quickly became the second member of the group. In April 2006 Barnes embarked on a wild goose chase, flying to Bucharest with only a phone number for renowned gypsy brass band Fanfare Ciocarlia. The day after they met, Barnes was setting up a makeshift studio in the front room of a local's house in the tiny Moldovan village of Zece Prajini, Romania. The Way The Wind Blows was written in a place without pavement and plumbing, and horse-drawn carts are more common than cars. But the town is suffused with a forgotten music, a joyous mixture of Jewish and gypsy tradition.

Barnes and Trost completed the album at home in Albuquerque with the help of a nineteen-year-old local named Zach Condon, better known these days as Beirut. AHAAH perform as part of Beirut on tour this Fall and return to Europe next Spring to reunite with some of their Balkan friends. The Way The Wind Blows... the sound of the Old World, made new again.

30-second MP3 excerpts:

In The River
The Way The Wind Blows
Song For Joseph
Fernando's Giampari
God Bless The Ottoman Empire
Waltz For Strings And Tuba
Oporto
Gadje Sirba
The Sparrow
Salt Water
There Is A River In Galisteo

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